Palaeolithic artefacts have been known from the deposits beneath Foxhall Road in Ipswich since 1900. The site, which is also known as Valley Brickyard or Derby Road, is in a large brickearth pit on the south side of the road and has yielded a large collection of lithic artefacts. The site was meticulously excavated by Layard from 1903-1905 and produced a primary context handaxe assemblage (Layard 1904, 1906). The archaeology is now thought to occur in clay or on gravel at the edge of a basin cut into Anglian till and glaciofluvial gravels (White & Plunkett 2005). This reinterpretation of Layard’s work, together with recent fieldwork (White and Allen, pers. comm.) suggests that the clay probably represents the infilling of an over-deepened pool within a fluvial system. The only fauna that has been recovered are extremely fragmented bones of large ungulates.
Archaeological Summary
Artefacts from the Layard excavations as reported by White & Plunkett (2004)
|
USG |
GC |
R/GrC |
WGC |
RG |
WSG |
GrC |
Handaxes/roughouts |
4 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
20 |
1 |
21 |
Flake tools |
2 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
Cores |
0 |
2 |
4 |
2 |
15 |
0 |
3 |
Flakes |
12 |
13 |
1 |
16 |
95 |
1 |
6 |
USG = upper sands and gravel; GC = gravelly clay; R/GrC = red/grey clay; WGC = white gravelly clay; RG = red gravel; WSG = white sandy gravel; GrC = grey clay.
